American Eloquence, Volume 2: Studies In American Political History (1896)
History
American Eloquence, Volume 2: Studies In American Political History (1896)
Speeches, addresses, etc., American; United States -- History; United States -- Politics and government
that, if they are to be complimented as prudent, moderate, Christian,
sagacious, statesmanlike reformers, we deserve the same praise; for they
have done nothing that we, in our measure, did not attempt before.
I claim this, that the cause, in its recent aspect, has put on nothing
but timidity. It has taken to itself no new weapons of recent years; it
has become more compromising,--that is all! It has become neither more
persuasive, more earnest, more Christian, more charitable, nor more
effective than for the twenty years pre-ceding. Mr. Hale, the head of
the Free Soil movement, after a career in the Senate that would do honor
to any man,--after a six years' course which entitles him to the respect
and confidence of the antislavery public, can put his name, within
the last month, to an appeal from the city of Washington, signed by a
Houston and a Cass, for a monument to be raised to Henry Clay! If that
be the test of charity and courtesy, we cannot give it to the world.
Some of the leaders of the Free Soil party of Massachusetts, after
exhausting the whole capacity of our language to paint the treachery of
Daniel Webster to the cause of liberty, and the evil they thought he was
able and seeking to do,--after that, could feel it in their hearts to
parade themselves in the funeral procession got up to do him honor! In
this we allow we cannot follow them. The deference which every gentleman
owes to the proprieties of social life, that self-respect and regard to
consistency which is every man's duty,--these, if no deeper feelings,
will ever prevent us from giving such proofs of this newly invented
Christian courtesy. We do not play politics, antislavery is no half-jest
with us; it is a terrible earnest, with life or death, worse than life
or death, on the issue. It is no lawsuit, where it matters not to the
good feeling of opposing counsel which way the verdict goes, and where
advocates can shake hands after the decision as pleasantly as before.
When we think of such a man as Henry Clay, his long life, his mighty
influence cast always into the scale against the slave, of that
irresistible fascination with which he moulded every one to his will;
when we remember that, his conscience acknowledging the justice of our
cause, and his heart open on every other side to the gentlest impulses,
he could sacrifice so remorselessly his convictions and the welfare of
millions to his low ambition; when we think how the slave trembled at
the sound of his voice, and that, from a multitude of breaking hearts
there went up nothing but gratitude to God when it pleased him to call
that great sinner from this world, we cannot find it in our hearts, we
could not shape our lips to ask any man to do him honor. No amount of
eloquence, no sheen of official position, no loud grief of partisan
friends, would ever lead us to ask monuments or walk in fine processions
for pirates; and the sectarian zeal or selfish ambition which gives up,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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